(Newser)
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A colossal iceberg twice the size of Manhattan has broken away from the end of Greenland's Petermann glacier. Another, even bigger, iceberg broke from the northerly glacier in 2010, and scientists had been keeping an eye on a crack near the glacier's tip for years, reports AP. "It's dramatic. It's disturbing," says University of Delaware professor Andreas Muenchow. "We have data for 150 years, and we see changes that we have not seen before. It's one of the manifestations that Greenland is changing very fast."

Glaciers naturally spawn icebergs, but the changes to Petermann since 2010 are unprecedented. "This is not part of natural variations anymore," says a NASA glaciologist. "The Greenland ice sheet as a whole is shrinking, melting, and reducing in size as the result of globally changing air and ocean temperatures, and associated changes in circulation patterns in both the ocean and atmosphere," says Muenchow, noting that northern Greenland and Canada have been warming five times faster than the average global temperature.

I went out for dinner and a couple of beers tonight since it's increasingly obvious we are all going to die soon.

Plato

Jul 18, 2012 11:30 PM CDT

Hey this could be a great real estate opportunity. Most of Greenland is covered with an ice sheet and is not developable. I don't know who owns that real estate but you should be able to buy it pretty cheap. So, buy several hundred square miles of it and when the ice is all melted and gone, hell develop it, right ? Seriously, P. J. O'Rourk said it on Bill Maher's 'Real Talk' show. "I do not deny that us humans are contributing to global warming, but there is no way we can stop it."

Just_Dave

Jul 18, 2012 11:34 AM CDT

Global warming is occurring. At least part of it is manmade. To take any other position is to be uninformed.